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Kev Quirk, one of the admins of Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance), destroys Meta in an email exchange. (fosstodon.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The exchange is about Meta's upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While they at first would adopt open standards and protocols, what stops them from creating proprietary extensions and using those and its dominance and resources to make it difficult for users to switch to other platforms in the Fediverse?

Nothing, which should probably raise concerns around how good a standard ActivityPub actually is if all it takes to drive a truck through its intent is one bad actor.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is it really fair to call Facebook just one bad actor? It's one of the largest corporations in the world, has some of the largest social media and messaging platforms out there. In terms of resources, there are very few companies, let alone individuals or groups, that can compete with Facebook.

If you look at it in these terms, you understand that Facebook has an interest in making sure that ActivityPub doesn't too large without Facebook having a say in it. If it could control the whole internet, I'm sure it would. So, no, I don't agree with your framing of the issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, it is just one bad actor.

If you look at it in these terms, you understand that Facebook has an interest in making sure that ActivityPub doesn't too large without Facebook having a say in it.

I don't think that ActivityPub is having any present difficulty keeping itself niche without Facebook's help - fedi has a total active user base of something like 2million, it's very literally a rounding error on Meta's user numbers. If there's a battle here, Facebook is already winning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Here's an article that goes into detail about why Facebook joining the Fediverse means the end of the Fediverse: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html.